A stark warning from global brokerage Bernstein has put India’s employment debate back in the spotlight this week. In an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bernstein analysts Venugopal Garre and Nikhil Arela cautioned that artificial intelligence-led automation could put 10 to 15 million jobs in India’s IT and business process outsourcing sectors at risk over the coming years, even as manufacturing struggles to absorb displaced workers fast enough.
The letter argues that a meaningful share of the roles that lifted India’s urban middle class over the past two decades are now directly exposed to automation, from routine coding and testing to back-office support functions that large language models can increasingly handle. Hiring data appears to back the concern: net additions at India’s top five IT companies fell by roughly 7,000 in the financial year ending March 2026, and Tata Consultancy Services has said it plans to hire only around 25,000 freshers this year, down sharply from an average of 40,000 in recent years.
Bernstein’s broader worry is structural. The brokerage points out that agriculture still employs 42 to 45 percent of India’s workforce while contributing only 15 to 16 percent of GDP, meaning the economy has long depended on service-sector job creation to absorb people moving off farms — a pathway that AI now threatens to narrow. The letter cautions that without urgent investment in domestic computing infrastructure and homegrown AI models, India risks becoming a permanent user of AI built elsewhere rather than a creator of the technology, with most of the economic value flowing to the US and China instead.
The government has publicly framed AI as an opportunity rather than a threat, pointing to its AI@Work push to boost productivity and create new categories of employment, alongside growth in AI/ML, data science and green-technology roles. But the Bernstein letter adds to a growing chorus of economists and industry voices asking whether India’s job-creation engine can be retooled quickly enough. With the next Union Budget and the country’s Viksit Bharat 2047 planning cycle both approaching, how policymakers respond to this warning is likely to shape the national conversation on jobs for months to come.
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